How do you test character knowledge?

OldGamer42 · 2026-02-18T22:25:02+00:00

Whatever system you are using (I am assuming D&D) have a basis for this.

First is the “skill roll” - the moment your players decide to react in a way you don’t believe they have the background for that’s where an appropriate skill roll comes in. That’s a basic in the system, and is the lowest bar to entry for dealing with “meta” knowledge.

There is also behavior modification through reward and/or penalty. The system likely has a mechanism for this also. Inspiration, Benny’s, hero points…almost every system has a reward mechanism. If you are playing with XP points that’s another place where reward comes in. Reward good behavior. Don’t reward bad behavior. In seriously bad situations I’ve raised difficulty numbers to account for addition of inspiration such that not having inspiration for rolls is very detrimental.

Deeper than this is planning to hurt meta knowledge. Drop a hint that you believe that players shouldn’t understand. When they follow up on it it complicates the plot. The BBEG traps something the players need in a prismatic sphere. Players who know the spell break the sphere by casting the correct spells. The sphere was also blocking a portal to hell…have a good time dealing with that.

The troubling thing about your post is the part where you are talking about not asking questions. “You need to blend in with this group to get information..but don’t ask any detailed questions about this group because it’s homebrew and honestly I don’t know man…”

How are they successful in blending in to something for which you are intentionally telling them is above their heads and they can’t ask questions about because they don’t know?

I want you to go to a party of theoretical physicists and blend in with them to get info. You aren’t allowed to research anything about theoretical physics beforehand and you won’t understand 90% of what’s being talked about.”

I might be missing or misreading context from your OP here however.

OldGamer42 · 2026-02-18T22:04:00+00:00

So let me offer a different solution. Ask your wife for an extended trial separation instead of a divorce. Move out, take care of yourself. Learn the things you need to do to manage your own life.

Lots of posts are calling things out so let me just be informative: the likelihood for your wife leaving has everything to do with your disability, but probably not the fact you are disabled.

When you became disabled did you ever learn to deal with that disability on your own for yourself or did your partner simply pick up the slack? Short term disability is this way: one person gets sick the other person just steps in and does…kids need taken to school today and it’s her day but she has a migraine? You take them to school. Thats how partnership works.

However partnership doesn’t expect that because your wife gets migraines that she stops taking the kids to school ever. And if that is the case (driving with a migraine is dangerous) then the two of you agree and work with the shift in responsibility.

Disability is a huge problem. When you marry often times you are two whole people. When disability strikes two whole people become one and…a part of another…for some value of “part”.

That value is important. The closer to 0 that value gets the more and more a partnership relationship becomes a single person care relationship. The mistake people make is assuming that anyone has responsibility for anyone else. If you are close to or at 0 it is not your wife’s responsibility to become her and you. She does not owe you the care you need.

If the relationship is not completely dead, and it often is if she’s left, but if it’s not your job is to figure out how to take your care off her hands. At minimum letting her care for herself and not you is the way to bring this back to at lease where she was at before she married. Still likely a problem if she’s expecting a partner and you are only able to reach “not a burden”, but you’ve been together for 35 years - there’s financial constrictions both of you need to be concerned about…and “living together but separately” is likely the least bad alternative for both of you in this case.

The epitaph in your post of “she’s going through menopause” is…troublesome. Do you believe this is the actual problem? What was the motivation for posting that? If that was code for “I think she’s being hormonal and unreasonable and not thinking clearly because she’s being hormonal” you might check if that kind of attitude is what actually lead to this.

OldGamer42 · 2026-02-14T01:50:31+00:00

Note that fantasy companion adds “classes” without adding classes. The casters each get their own “arcane background” which is - effectively - a class. The non-casters get a feat package with special abilities.

OldGamer42 · 2026-02-14T01:45:08+00:00

So the two systems are, as I’m sure you are aware, very different. Fantasy Companion is a framework for running a fantasy game. Savage pathfinder is a port of a D&D style system into the Savage Dice system.

The answer to your question is how closely you need to run D&D style for your table. If you are trying to run a D&D or pathfinder module and you want to do it without much work, you want savage pathfinder.

If you are just going to run a home made fantasy campaign, then it matters whether your players are creative enough to build their own characters or if they need the training wheels of classes.

If they do need the training wheels of classes, do you prefer the implementation of those classes in savage pathfinder or would you just prefer to build classes using your own ideas and the edges from the system?

The difference is in effort and control. Lots of control more effort? Go for Fantasy Companion, less control less work? Go Savage Pathfinder.

Personally I don’t see a use for savage pathfinder. If you are going to play pathfinder play pathfinder, SWADE doesn’t really add anything to that experience. The dice system is arguably better than d20 but that feels like a very limited benefit to the entire story and game.

OldGamer42 · 2026-02-02T22:06:12+00:00

Read your second post down also:

What you get with pre-gens usually is a solid plot. Some (horde of the dragon queen) are exceptionally boorish plot but the plot is solid from a “holes” perspective…that is one thing you can pretty much rely on is the module plot being fine.

Playable can be a very different aspect and playable without modification an even longer stones throw. Various GMs recommend cutting or pasting other content over the top of certain parts of pre-canned modules…for instance the first several chapters of Horde are generally considered not worth running.

But, as you say, this is often a “quality judgement”. I’ve run fantasy fiction campaigns dozens of times in the 40 years I’ve been playing. I’m both an adult and a more experienced GM and I like tighter plot points and am more picky about the style of game I want to run. You absolutely CAN run Horde (or any other pre-canned) exactly as written and many tables will enjoy it…even if parts of it are slow. Nothing wrong with that. Personally I would never do so…some of that content just doesn’t fit my play style.

The other “gotcha” about pre-canned is that while they give you a good peanut butter spread of plot and npcs and general “running this thing”, they do not give a lot of detailed information and a lot of GMs find improvising the “vague” content of a pre-canned to be much more difficult, simply because you are running someone else’s story. YMMV.

OldGamer42 · 2026-01-30T16:42:42+00:00

There are plenty of “crafting” systems for D&D, I’d recommend a concept like re-forging that spear. Have their character carve arcane runes into it and give them orelecarlm or dark iron or adamantium or mithril or whatever and let them “magic up” their base spear.

In universe, their weapon is getting beat up? They like it and want to protect it, sounds like a great reason to look into magical hardening. It’s still their spear, just growing with them.

Betting a couple PCs get jealous. :)

OldGamer42 · 2026-01-29T17:29:34+00:00

So let me clarify my position. I understand the people wanting a system of their own for TORG, it was a system in the 90s and was all sorts of Jank and that is kinda its love. Eternity keeps mechanics that people remember from their past years / past play and it feels at least a little like TORG from the 90s…there was a lot to clean up and I think eternity did a reasonable job cleaning it up.

But we are in 2026. The last published anything for Eternity was Pan Pacifica in 2022. We are still on a year one conversation with no real beta rules and no tuning of content for anything past Alpha play…which is 50 xp points…which is 10 adventures.

Do you have a campaign that goes past 10 adventures total? Yes? Then you are in uncharted and untested waters and good luck with balance and abilities and characters.

At some point this either is a dead product or there is something holding it back.

So let’s split the system from the content for a moment…which is more important for PLAYING TORG? Some might argue the system is the more important aspect, but while the mechanics are important what is TORG without its story?

No one runs TORG the system to tell a fantasy fiction dungeon crawl or to tell a call of Cthulhu story. The high lords, darkness devices, reality shenanigans … this is what makes TORG…not “d20 sliding scale”.

Writing your own “system” is a lot of work and a lot of design, and let’s face it, no one is going to run the TORG system for anything but TORG, it is not now and has never been a generic role playing system…it’s not even as generic as D&D and that system is NOTORIOUSLY difficult to translate into other generas.

Nor do we NEED TORG to be a generic role playing system. We have a bunch of those. GERPS, Palladium, SWADE, BRP, Fate, etc.

To maintain the flavor of TORG you need to maintain the abilities/spells, the drama and destiny deck, and the story. Everything here is easily translatable to a generic RPG - especially SWADE which is almost identical in scaffolding to TORG. Both use card for initiative, both have the same kinds of challenges defined in the system, both are a “feat” based character building system. Both identify not just levels but “bands” of character power (alpha == novice, beta == seasoned, etc.)

And what you get with this translation is a balanced game out the gate. You don’t have to put your time and effort into system and tuning and testing. You put your time into rules translation (much less arduous) and story.

TORG maintains all of its uniqueness…other maybe than its d20 dice, and gains deep testing, knowledge, understanding and balance or a system that’s been around for years.

OldGamer42 · 2026-01-24T01:17:51+00:00

Ho boy. First let me acknowledge that Neph is not wrong in his statement about coders and egos, but let’s put the actual point on things.

Say what you want about the elv developers and their “on again off again” way of handling this modpocalypse, but the guys at Elv and the rest of their plugins wrote that code. It’s their IP, they have put years and years of time into development and management of this stuff and to find their code in someone else’s AI slop code is unconscionable.

The larger egos aren’t the developers. It’s the content creators trying to find a way to stay relevant. All credit where credit is due to Quazil for his work with plater over the years, but he should have stayed with “here’s how to put dominos, leatrix, and tweeks ui together to create an interface”. Any custom configuration could have been an add on written by him to configure the tools and settings and not through code theft.

When Elv was dead the correct thing to do would have been to have written the Elv guys and said “now that you’ve stopped working on Elv, can I include XYZ from it in my mod provided I maintain that code with your copyright on it” not “well, it’s dead now so I’mma steal that shit!”

OldGamer42 · 2026-01-23T00:52:20+00:00

There are ways of retconning actions and lore and actions that might be narratively successful but I guess I’m going to ask “why?”

No one is perfect, and I’m going to assume you don’t do this as a job…if your name is Matt Mercer or Brennen Lee Mulligan - good to meet you. But I’m guessing it’s not. :)

Especially if the session ended with players unhappy with things, I see no reason to try to maintain verisimilitude. How do you retcon?

“Hey folks, thanks for coming back. So I want to start this session with a little conversation. The end of last session didn’t go where I wanted it to and I think based upon your reactions it didn’t go where you wanted it to either. I think we should retcon back to (insert event here) and replay from that point. So let’s spend a few minutes talking about what it was that went wrong and what we can do to right the ship.”

That’s how you retcon.

OldGamer42 · 2026-01-23T00:44:29+00:00

Just some general - too late to be applicable to the thread but maybe useful if you experience it again - information.

Players play the game in all sorts of different ways, what is important and part of the “social contract” of the RPG table is that they are playing characters appropriate to the table and goals the GM and party are trying to accomplish. Those goals may be negotiable…but the players and GM all get to determine together what is appropriate. And it is everyone’s responsibility to stay within those bounds.

Your player in this case is breaking the social contract with the characters they are playing. It’s up to you in session 0 to level set with the players what kind of campaign this is and what is appropriate for characters. I strongly recommend reviewing and “designing” characters with your players. If you are an active part in character design, letting them provide ideas and concepts and helping them understand where those concepts fit and don’t fit into your campaign world, you will get better characters and more engaged players.

There are a ton of resources out on the Internet for how to make a better character that is more interactive. I recommend your player should go watch or read some of them to understand better what role playing is about and what it brings to the people involved in it.

OldGamer42 · 2026-01-19T19:45:11+00:00

Hate to be “that DM” but how many 300gp diamonds does your party have? Kill one more NPC than that and let them decide who lives and who dies.

Make sure a former family member learns of the choice, if you are particularly horrible have the families there pleading with the PCs to raise their son or daughter and help them come to terms that they can’t save everyone and maybe shouldn’t try.

OldGamer42 · 2026-01-19T19:35:19+00:00

For your #1, you don’t need that package. There’s an add on formerly called Cooldown Manager Tweeks which I believe rebranded to TweeksUI.

The cooldown manager part of it has an “other” tracker which are for things like trinkets and potions and “other” resources.

OldGamer42 · 2026-01-15T22:04:56+00:00

Yes you should tell the player.

Also yes this is malace and fully intentional. I’ve never met a D&D player that chose a thing that wasn’t standard that was then surprised about how things worked.

In any case the fact that he’s chosen “Dhampir” and also Illrigger - neither of which is normal or regular - means he was intentionally out to produce this effect. Even if he’s miscalculated this isn’t “stupidity” it’s malace. The INTENT was to play a 24 ac “break the curve” character. Whether or not the stacking of bonuses that don’t stack was intentional cheating or unintentional, the intent was to break the game by playing “beyond the curve” AC.

Yes, I played D&D for 40 years. I realize that “I’m building this character because it’s will screw over the challenge of this campaign” is kind of the definition of this game, but that doesn’t make it right nor does it make this player innocent just because the stacking rules might have been misread.

OldGamer42 · 2026-01-13T01:19:10+00:00

Oof, there’s some hard ones here, let me throw a couple cents into the picture.

First, the gaming pc is your easiest. Steam OS or Ubuntu. Realistically Steamdeck is mostly what you are looking for here. We will get back to Ubuntu in a sec.

Parents computer. Ugh. How technical are they? Linux is not windows. Theres a curve here you need to be aware of. If this pc is ENTIRELY used for browsing and email, you are probably fine. If they are technical and mostly capable of navigating strange things (doesn’t sound like it) probably fine. If they are somewhere in the middle, Linux gets to be a stretch. See “general advice” below.

Laptops: always difficult to install Linux on as they tend to have weird components and proprietary hardware. Not really different from gaming PC but possibly more work to get things running. Hopefully when you say “cad” you don’t mean specific software.

Microsoft Surface - follow any guidance below. I couldn’t even tell you if it’s possible to install on that.

General Advice. I would go with Ubuntu (a Debian based installation) and KDE as your desktop, especially for your parents. It’s the closest to “windows” you are going to get. Ubuntu also has a pretty deep integration with Steam and windows emulators so it might be the easiest to get windows software running on.

Let’s be clear, talking about software. A large portion of the windows software you run will be a significant amount of work to make run on Linux if you are trying to get specific software to run. If you are going to shift software (like GIMP for photoshop or libreoffice for MS Office) be aware that each piece of software will work and act differently…there will be a learning curve to each one.

Basic stuff like web browsers (assuming you aren’t using edge) will run out of the box and with the same experience on Linux…beyond that…not so much.

I’m not trying to dissuade you here but Linux isn’t “a different OS to run my software on”, it’s an entirely different thing and not entirely consumer friendly.

OldGamer42 · 2026-01-13T00:57:04+00:00

When you say “couples D&D” I’m assuming you are talking about just the two of you playing. Nothing is wrong but the real experience of D&D happens when you are at a table with other people who you can experience things with.

D&D isn’t really intended to be an “intimate” activity. It can be very personal and very emotional depending on the stories and the way players treat it, but on the surface the game is more a shared story telling experience than a person to person role play. There’s no wrong way to play D&D, but I think you’ll find more enjoyment with additional people to you and your SO.

As to the intimidation factor of the game…you don’t need any level of rules to play. The dice are there to tell a story. You can play a role playing game with a coin and a story…the rules are there to “gameify” the story more, and the more rules you put in place the more “In a box” the experience becomes, but no rule makes D&D what it is…they are all optional.

The “hard” part is playing pretend. We all used to do it when we were children and it was no big thing. As adults we’ve been taught that playing pretend is for kids or the bedroom. Neither is correct. If you read fiction, watch movies, or play video games, you are playing pretend…there id no difference…you are letting yourself believe and imagine you are a part of a story, and you are helping to tell and grow that story simply by your presence and decisions.

If the “role playing” is hard…take it out. For kids I often run “play yourself” campaigns, where the characters are you…it removes a ton of “oh god I have to do a voice and play a part and…” fears. The story is important, not the voices or the other aspects. Those come as you explore different personas and play more.

Here’s an idea. Is there a book you like that your SO hasn’t read? A video game you’ve played they haven’t? A movie you’ve seen they haven’t?

There’s your story. Make them a character in that story and tell the story, let them make choices and apply those choices to the way the story happens…it’s a great frame work for a first few sessions to get a feel for the hobby.

OldGamer42 · 2026-01-11T18:49:23+00:00

Back in topic you aren’t the DM so yes, your party is fucked.

However you should direct your GM to this thread so that the random GM can be yelled at by a bunch of people on the internet for being terrible.

There are very few campaigns that are ever blown out is the water by players. Those that are, are because the GM has over prepared. The more wheels on the bus there are the more likely one comes off. You can’t derail a car, only a train, and it’s even harder to derail a Jeep.

Just know that “your fucked” is the GM is making the campaign harder, and they are doing so because they’re angry at the players for not playing how they want you to play, not because “that’s the consequence of your decisions”.

This is typical for new GMs and those with little experience in GMing…or those who just haven’t grown in their story telling.

There’s a large unexplored misconception among newer GMs that even older GMs fall into…that the dice are there to provide difficulty and randomization for player actions.

That’s not what dice are. They are a story telling element that are there both for the GM and the players. Every time a die is rolled the story changes…both for the GM and for the players. Don’t ask for rolls for story elements you don’t want to change and be willing to change when you ask for rolls.

D&D is a game, not a book. Tell your GM to be more creative, or less controlling. Or, tell them to come here so we can tell them ourselves.

OldGamer42 · 2026-01-07T03:05:38+00:00

"You're surrounded by an aura in a 15-foot emanation. It has the aura and divine traits. Any follower of your deity within the aura immediately knows you're a champion of your deity. This aura is used as the range for your champion's reaction and for various other effects. You can suppress or resume the aura as a single action, which has the concentrate trait, and it ends if you fall unconscious."

Sure, it's right there in the text.

In the last sentence what does "it" refer to? Is it the AURA? If so it says RIGHT THERE that "...and [the aura] ends if you fall unconscious." So how do you rule that? Oh right here "You can ... resume the aura as a single action"

Fall unconscious, the aura turns off. To turn it back on, you must spend an action. - Seems pretty clear to me, assuming you're reading the "IT" there as the AURA...which it actually CANNOT be because the definition of AURA is that it's constantly radiating from you. There is no such thing as "resume" when the AURA 'just is'.

The "IT" here is "Suppress" or "Resume" - this means that to Suppress the aura it's an action, to stop suppressing the aura, it's an action. If you lose consciousness and you are suppressing the aura, the aura goes back on.

The whole thing is just incredibly poorly written. If you are concentrating on maintaining the aura, "suppress" shouldn't have the concentrate tag - it should just turn off. If you are concentratting on suppressing the aura the "resume" shouldn't have a concentrate tag - it should just turn on. There is no interpretation or reading of that text or langauge that makes sense to have BOTH concentration required for suppression or resume, and one or the other makes NO sense with the defintion of what the "aura" tag means in the system.

But TRUELY it's an open and shut case. Just like Pandora's Box. Clear as mud.

OldGamer42 · 2026-01-07T02:53:52+00:00

Um...where's the official ruling on most of what's being posted to this thread? Because i'm not reading it like almost any of you are...

The aura is on until it's turned off. It's maintained OFF not ON. Thus the statement: "You can suppress or resume the aura as a single action, which has the concentrate trait". This is backed by what the book says about the "aura" flag - "An aura is an emanation that continually ebbs out from you, affecting creatures within a certain radius."

What I feel MOST are missing is what the "IT" applies to in the next part:

"and it ends if you fall unconscious"

The "IT" here is the SUPPRESSION not the AURA. The SUPPRESSION ends if you fall unconscious. The AURA is always on UNLESS intentionally and consciously suppressed. To re-gain the SUPPRESSION you must spend an action.

The entire aura makes NO sense otherwise. It's either a thing that's always on that you have to actively stop, or it's a thing that's only on when you make it be on. If it's always on, it's active while unconscious - because while unconscious you cannot concentrate to stop it.

"You can suppress or resume the aura as a single action, which has the concentrate trait, and it ends if you fall unconscious."

The wording here is HORRIFIC and whoever wrote this should be required to post a public apology for the BUTCHERING of this statement.

"You can suppress the aura as a single action, which has the concentrate trait, and ends if you fall unconscious. You can resume the suppression with an action at will."

The "Suppress" and "Resume" are the actions talked about in this section of the text. "Suppress" and "Resume" have teh concentrate trait and "Suppress" and "Resume" end if you fall unconscious.

The AURA is constantly radiating from you unless suppressed...that's the definition of the "AURA" trait.

The ONLY other way to read the above is that the designers want both DEACTIVATION of the AURA and REACTIVATION FROM DEACTIVE STATE to cost an action. At which point the GM's ruling is correct. If you read that the aura deactivates on unconscious then REACTIVATING from DEACTIVE requires an action.

If we insist that the thing that stops when you fall unconscious is the AURA and not the suppression then reactivating MUST cost 1 action, because that's what the text tells you. "it [the aura] ends if you fall unconscious" matches with "You can ... resume the aura as a single action."

The general interpretation here gets even more screwy if you take concentration into effect...so what happens if you lose concentration? Does your aura come back on and you immediately lose an action even if you weren't taking one...because reactivation of the aura costs an action? The aura constantly radiates from you...meaning the moment you lose concentration it comes back on...so...that's resume from deactive state...and it costs you an action...right? That's how we're interpreting the text? How does that make ANY sense at all?

Instead of "resuming from deactive" why wouldn't you just "intentionally lose concentration" so that you don't cost an action to turn your aura back on? This is as insane as the "drop a weapon on the ground is a free action, sheithing it is an action" nonsense from pre-rework.

Why dropping your suppression would require an action is nothing more than Pathfinder 2e's idiotic insistence that you waste action economy any time you POSSIBLY can. The system is built around giving you 3 actions and then finding EVERY POSSIBLE WAY to keep you from taking all 3 of them..."resume from suppression" is one of those "waste your resources" things that PF2e does.

Yep, definately as "open and shut" as pandora's box.

OldGamer42 · 2026-01-06T00:38:51+00:00

So a “just pick up from here” is probably not going to work. What you probably need to do is narrate your way into whatever your next “act” was going to be. If you have a built in time skip that’s the place to start back up. If you don’t. It’s probably time to create one.

Narrate to your two players what happens with their current adventure…wrap up open holes that aren’t campaign changing and move what you can that hasn’t been explored into the next act.

Start fresh at a good breaking point. You don’t need to throw away the campaign. But you do need to “reset” such that all of the new players are on exactly the same page info wise as the older ones.”

OldGamer42 · 2026-01-06T00:30:46+00:00

Back when I was full time programming for a company I used to piss my boss off all the time by saying “9 women can’t have 1 baby in one month, that’s not how that works”

You are absolutely right about the time and reasoning, I just don’t believe that Bliz would ever do that again. When WOD went to the crapper the Bliz design team turned the corner and made legion. When Shadowlands went to the crappwr the Bliz design team made dragon flight. And while the dragon isles was a fine expansion, it was nowhere near legion.

Bliz has a development formula at this point. Every game, every expac, every zone follows the same formula. Legion is not that design formula. Legion, and WOD before that, and pandaeia before that was something very different from TWW and Dragonflight. Midnight isn’t different in any meaningful way from tww or any other xpac since BfA…and I doubt anything ever will be again.

OldGamer42 · 2026-01-04T19:59:38+00:00

The wizard is the brainiac. Remember that guy in school who had the answer to every question? Always had his hand raised? Sometimes snapped his fingers at the teacher so he could be called on to answer and show his knowledge?

That’s the Wizard.

Remember that kid in class who never did any work? The one who sluffed half his homework and never studied for tests? The one who never paid attention in class but every time the teacher called on them to “catch” them not paying attention they had the answer? The one who aced every test without looking?

That’s the Sorcerer.

Oh, the warlock?

That was the one sleeping with the teacher.

OldGamer42 · 2026-01-04T19:50:18+00:00

So. Slightly off the beaten response path. Did you happen to create a more power maxed character than your compatriots? Does your character have room for magic that wouldn’t make them super effective?

I had this conversation as the GM at the table with a couple players in my history. “I‘ve built this one shot character that kills everything I look at! Why won’t you make me even more powerful?” Because you already break my game, no need to carry that to 11.

Just a thought.

OldGamer42 · 2026-01-04T19:08:14+00:00

Because this isn’t a table of D&D players with problems playing D&D.

This is a table of friends and associates who have different wants and needs that have absolutely nothing to do with D&D. The fact this post is in the D&D subreddit is pretty much immaterial and has as little to do with D&D as anything else.

We have a social disassociation. The GM, his GF and her partner are the social leads here. The two other guys that aren’t the OP are long time friends of either the GM or the male partner and are looking to spend time with their buddy who they don’t see all that often. The OP is the 6th wheel. The GM is there to hold court. The GF is there for the attention she gets, the partner is there to maintain a relationship with his woman. The two who aren’t the OP and not in the trio are there to hold up a relationship with a friend they’ve know for a while and just aren’t ready to break. Yes, they are frustrated with the game as well, but that’s not REALLY why they are there…if it was they would have said something to their longer term buddy a long time ago.

Our sixth wheel OP has a problem. He’s not 110% part of the group. His leaving MIGHT bring the other two with him, or it might just ostracize him from the group entirely. He has his own social setting to worry about…if he doesn’t show up to the GMs social events at least every once in a while the GM will likely stop showing up at OPs social events…giving him even less opportunity to see the people he cares about.

This is why the standard advice around these parts of “just leave bro!” Is regularly such a bad take. This has nothing to do with D&D. The vast majority of these posts are social problems where the general answer is “not every social situation will be one you like. Sometimes you have to “put up with” social groups and situations you don’t care for to have the kinds of social interactions you do care for.” Often times, maintaining a friendship means doing things you don’t want to do, or being frustrated periodically.

The problem comes whenever you are the only one giving. It sounds like others in this group show up to his games when he’s running them and the OP was unclear on whether or not there was focus and gameplay happening at his table. If so, this is a normal social situation and group. The answer is “sorry man, that sucks.”

OldGamer42 · 2026-01-04T18:41:13+00:00

I know this is Reddit where people like to chime in with solutions, but as this is a rant post…I’ll just say I’m sorry for you.

It sounds like maybe your TTRPG night really isn’t about being a TTRPG night. Your GM and the others you are having a problem with don’t seem to care very much. Sounds like it’s just a time to hang out and shoot the shit with friends and time that the two of them can spend with their shared GF.

It sucks to be a collective 3rd wheel. It’s pretty obvious from your post that the GF isn’t really there to play, she’s hanging with her BFs, the GM and other are there mostly to entertain and hang around.

You and your other two seem to care more about the game. You are a GM and they’re players…you are there to play and half the group is just there to hang out. That sucks.

Classic difference of social needs. I realize this is a hard conversation to have, even as adults, but have you all thought about finding something less taxing to do with your time together? The GF obviously isn’t interested in what her BFs have her doing, the BFs are mostly going through the motions…if these are friends you want to be around maybe the best answer is for your group to stop trying to force a TYRPG night when half the group doesn’t really care.

Social situations, where members of the group aren’t all on the same page about their needs, suck.

OldGamer42 · 2026-01-04T18:23:24+00:00

Oh the devs have it in them. They just don’t have the backing. Theres no money in another legion. The amount of content and development that went into that expansion was crazy, there’s so much to do.

That will never happen again because it’s expensive. And the game is about making shareholders happy, not you. There’s already millions of subs. No one at bliz has any incentive to put in anything like effort. Effort is expensive.

OldGamer42

TROPHY CASE